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Dance Medicine Center
The UCSF Dance Medicine Center recognizes dancers as world-class athletes who endure extreme physical demands and warrant specialized care. Professional dancers spend up to eight hours a day performing at levels of intensity that cause chronic injury. Many of these injuries take dancers off the stage for six months to a year or end their careers altogether.
At our Dance Medicine Center, we work with dancers to develop treatment plans that, when possible, allow patients to continue dancing without further aggravating a condition or causing more serious injury.
Our center — located in the UCSF Orthopaedic Institute at Mission Bay — offers a weekly screening and education clinic. We provide injury and technique evaluation, musculoskeletal screening and treatment and education.
Dancers also may be evaluated in the UCSF Human Performance Center, which has a suspended dance floor, ballet bar, Pilates reformer and high-tech motion monitoring system.
Our team of experts includes a physical therapist, primary care sports medicine specialist and two orthopedic surgeons who have backgrounds in professional dance and treating dancers.
The center is open to dancers of all ages, levels and techniques.
Conditions Treated
Sixty-five percent of the injuries that dancers sustain are those affecting the ankle and foot. The most common injuries include:
- Achilles tendinitis
- Ankle sprain
- Flexor hallucis longus (FHL) tendinitis
- Hip pain or "snapping hip"
- Patellar tendinitis
- Posterior ankle impingement
Treatments
Total rest is the gold standard treatment for an ankle or foot injury for the general population . But this lack of activity often leads to muscle weakening so dancers require an alternative to total rest, which allows them to maintain body muscle strength and balance without aggravating the current injury.
Therapies may include:
- Core strengthening exercises
- Dancer-specific physical therapy
- Floor bar balance exercises
- Foot and ankle taping techniques
- Pilates
- Removable casts
- Technique retraining
In the most severe cases, surgery may be recommended, but surgery typically requires six to 12 months of recovery time — a period when dancers most likely can't perform.
What to Bring
Please bring any previous test results or reports related to your condition as well as a list of all medications you are taking, including over-the-counter medications, vitamins and supplements. Please wear dance attire or sports shorts and bring any shoes used in your form of dance.
What to Expect
To best understand the cause of your injury, our experts may evaluate your dance technique on our suspended dance floor. Based on this evaluation, we will teach you ways to practice proper body mechanics and therapeutic exercises.
Research
In addition to caring for patients, experts at the Dance Medicine Center conduct research on issues related to dance injuries such as hip range of motion. They are studying single leg balance in dancers with and without ankle instability, utilizing a novel taping technique.
The Dance Medicine Center also offers a series of lectures on dance topics, such as "Starting On Pointe," "Injury Prevention for Dancers" and "Finding Your Core." Call the Orthopaedic Institute for more information about these lectures.
Our Experts
Getting Here
Dance Medicine Center
1500 Owens St.
San Francisco, CA 94158
Hours: Tuesday, 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
Phone: (415) 353-9400
Fax: (415) 353-9643
Healthy Dancers' Clinic
To serve the dance community in San Francisco, we also established the volunteer-run Healthy Dancers Clinic, which provides free injury screening to dancers of all levels, ages and techniques. The clinic is located at San Franciscos ODC Dance Commons at 351 Shotwell St. in San Francisco's Mission District. (ODC, formerly called the Oberlin Dance Collective, was founded in 1971 as a collective of dancers from Oberlin College in Ohio.)
The volunteer team of experts includes physical therapists, primary care sports medicine specialists and orthopedic surgeons who have backgrounds in professional dance and treating dancers.
Healthy Dancers' Clinic
351 Shotwell St.
San Francisco, CA 94110
Hours: Monday to Friday, call the clinic for hours and appointment information
Phone: (415) 863-6606
Fax: (415) 863-9833
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